Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Legendary producer AFTA-1 has returned in a big way with 2 new full-length albums and 2 new EP's. In what can be described as nothing less than Bandcamp wizardry (or fuckery), he has released a digital onslaught in the past two months -- across three.different.Bandcamps no less -- giving all of them false future release dates and at times deleting and re-uploading releases -- even to the point of selling unheard, individual tracks. The best example is the release of his 'Yellow Red Blue' EP, which only remained online to purchase for 1 day (it has since returned on his official Bandcamp). Another example, is him nonchalantly posting to an online post (much like this one) an unreleased companion track to his album 'LIGHTHOUSE', "Mother Earth", which clocked in at over 15 minutes. Sadly, this is the only bit of new material that escaped me that he's seemingly left to the ether.

His album 'Toy Machines'is the same album as 'おもちゃの機械たち' on his official Bandcamp (which in fact roughly translates to "Toy Machines"),
though oddly (or orderly?) the track-lengths vary by 1-30 seconds and
the production styles of the same songs are noticeably different (where IMO the official 'おもちゃの機械たち' is much cleaner sounding, and also includes song-titles and not 12 underscores for a tracklisting). More on this point, 'SUN MOON WIND WATER' features tracks that can all be found on the full-length 'LIGHTHOUSE', though they have different titles and are slightly extended/shortened, and again with slightly different production techniques -- I assume this EP is something of a condensed version of 'LIGHTHOUSE'. To make matters more confusing, the original artwork for 'おもちゃの機械たち' used to be the same as the other Bandcamp's album artwork for 'LIGHTHOUSE'. One thing to be certain, fuckery aside, is that all of this new material is absolutely awesome. And it's literally being updated and altered as you read this.Some of the tracks even include his vocals, a welcome return in my opinion since their debut with his track "7th Sun". Fans of AFTA-1 are in for surprises (clearly), but expect the same level of quality he's expressed since his debut on 'Aftathoughts Vol. 1'. And please support this beat/space maven in whatever capacity you can, even if you buy an individual track from him. Who knows, you might even be the only person who'll ever have it.